Outcome of Anthracycline versus Taxane Based Regimens on Different Metastatic Sites in Breast Cancer

Background: Breast cancer holds a wide spectrum of heterogeneity in terms of 
gene expression, immunophenotypes, treatment response and clinical outcomes. 
Metastatic breast cancer is an incurable disease and the main aims of treatment 
are survival prolongation and improvement quality of life. Median survival is 
established by tumor biology, therapy response, patient tolerance to treatment 
and comorbid diseases. The overall median survival for each subgroup is 
approximately 2.5 years. Several studies suggested that the regimens based on 
anthracycline are better than regimens based on taxanes in the progression time. 
Our study aims to evaluate comparison between anthracycline versus taxanes 
containing regimens in treatment of metastatic breast cancer patients.
Material and Method: This is a retrospective cohort study of 225 cases of 
metastatic breast cancer at Medical Oncology Department of South Egypt 
Cancer Institute, Assiut University in the timeline between January 2013 to 
December 2018. Patients were selected to be pathologically confirmed 
metastatic disease at time of presentation or recurrence after surgery with 
different pathological subtypes in female patients to assess comparison between 
anthracycline versus taxanes containing regimen in treatment of metastatic 
breast cancer patients and their effect on different metastatic sites and on 
survival.
Result: Clinicopathological criteria was almost balanced between the two 
groups including age, menopausal status, tumor size, nodal status, distant 
metastasis, tumor grade, histo-pathological criteria, hormonal status and site of 
metastasis. The patients with liver metastases shown more significant response 
with anthracycline based regimen than with taxane based regimen (80.0% vs 
35.7% P value <0.001) but the response rate of other metastatic sites in both 
groups were nearly comparable. The patients who received taxane based 
regimen shown higher OS than the patients who received anthracycline based 
regimen (74.5 ± 5.2% vs 54.9 ± 6.5% P value 0.015) but no difference appeared 
in PFS on both groups.
Conclusion: Anthracycline based regimen shows significant improvement in 
response rate in patients with liver metastases in comparison to taxane based 
regimen while the patients who received taxane based regimen show more 
significant OS but no difference in PFS in both groups.